Apocrypha
by OnTheImportanceOfLungs
Summary: The Fifth Grail War is done. Everyone's moved on, but Shirou keeps having strange dreams about trials to come. And then, one day, they arrive. This story is not for the faint of heart. Everything is convoluted in a way that makes my other work look like Hemingway. Shirou/Rin and mentions of Shirou/Saber. Features the wider Nasuverse and Angel Notes.


Notes: This is named Fate/Apocrypha after the books in the bible that aren't considered canon, which tell the stories of probably some of my favorite heroes - Daniel, Esther, etc. Of course, Fate/Apocrypha will be by no means religious (not even to Nasu canon, unfortunately).

This, I believe, falls under the whole Viewers are Geniuses trope in TVtropes. I'd link it if I could, but I think as an author I've ruined your life enough already. There are endnotes to stuff I feel must be explained.

In other words, I'm putting a lot, lot lot, lot lot lot of work into this. It's mostly for me. I don't expect many readers, but I guess I'd love the few to participate (PMs, reviews, whatever). This is an almost philosophical-literary work, but the primary premise is indulgent fun.

That means this is rated M. There will obviously be no explicit sex. But there's going to be violence. Most of the violence will probably come from the ways I'll be using language to assault concepts that have been built up to critical mass.

Please don't expect updates from this, at least not regular ones. I do very much intend to finish this, but it takes a backseat to Fractal and my Fire Emblem story.

However, if you bear with me and my insanity, I promise you will get plot and characters and probably the most ambitious stuff I've ever done. And a very, very large sample of my experience with life (which should be less than it is in scope).

Explanations for everything will be at the bottom of the chapter/serial/whatever these things are.

If there's stuff you don't understand, there's a 50% chance someone before you didn't either and it'll be clarified at the top of the next chapter. The other 50 is that I don't understand it, but it triggered some sort of thought in my head and it had to be on the paper.

**1**

the sea cAlls(1*) foreverever,everever(2*), ight?

ORT(3*) progenitor instrumentality crystalline rewrite

impact(4*) southamerica whereamerica we'reamericafuckyeah F24insight(5*)

picture of a shawty armless** crackling radio(6*) somethingsowrongfeelso… right**

dream of swords what is a sword just another king passing on a burning ship(7*) into the night

It was just another blinking black barrel(8*) spilling bone marrow(9*), the shaft of the spear of Longinus(10*) against the hands of humanity's finest(8*), a man named Jesus ripped to pieces(11*), connected to the lines drawn in conflict(12*) in world for so long so sick(13*).

popcultur(14*) as the years fly by dragged down by gravity's rainbow(15*) to attend finnegan's wake(16*) so i-could-be-your-boy-you-could-be-my-girl(14*) in the infinite jest(17*) made instant by special relativity(18*) just to come-and-rock-my-world(14*) ilya is german not southafrikaan irish french hispanic jewish.(19*)

Shirou blinked.

Shirou blinked again.

"What was that?" he wondered aloud, sitting up, his thoughts awhirl and cold sweat breaking over his nude torso and rolling down a smooth chest with just a strong hint of definition. He stared over at the outline of Rin's body, his breath caught in his throat by what he still pretended was voyeuristic and forbidden.

She was leaving soon, there was no harm in just having a little more fun, was there? He slowly drew the sheets back, watching the pale moonlight bathe her perfection in a milky white light. She looked so peaceful.

"No matter how far apart we are, I'll stay with you forever, as I couldn't stay with her," he said to the sleeping girl. His vocal cords echoed forever, but made no noise.

But as his hands snaked out to caress her nude body, he closed his mind and saw something not so human and screamed.

Rin sat up quickly and he reddened.

Shirou had a quick vision of Eowyn taking the head off of a Nazgul(20*) and giggled nervously. Rin rolled her eyes, rolled over and rolled back into her dreams of magic, England and Shirou becoming less dorky.

"You're allowed to touch me, you know," she mumbled and Shirou smiled. Some fighter jet bombed Iwo Jima on TV. He winced and turned it off for good.

He put his hands on her back, wondering what Saber would have thought if she had still been along. _She would have wanted me to be happy_, he reminded himself, and ran his hands down her sides. Rin gave an anticipatory shiver.

Shirou closed his eyes, everything died and he screamed.

He opened his eyes again.

"What's wrong with you tonight?" Rin said, turning around and glaring at him. Shirou gulped and shook his head sheepishly.

"Bad dream," he muttered lamely. He didn't usually remember the contents from his dream, but he'd been practicing magic more lately and he was reading more and he _was_ totally getting smarter and cooler, if for Rin's benefit more than his own.

He just hoped that he hadn't become an oracle over night.

**Explanations**

1. "the sea cAlls" - a reference and metareference to the symbolism of the ocean in Moby Dick, to an extent. The miscapitalization is the metareference - to the madness and obsession of Captain Ahab.

2. Kanye West - "forever-ever" followed by a string of evers is out of "Diamonds are Forever" which samples the song from the James Bond movie of the same name and makes a social commentary about how people are shielded from the horrors of the world by their glitz and glamor in first world countries. He talks about how girls get their arms blown off and wonders why the aforementioned glitz and glamor is so addictive.

3. ORT - Type Mercury from Nasu's universe, capable of creating a marble phantasm known as Crystal Valley. Purported (by author-confirmation) to be the most powerful thing encountered in his universe. Though we can be reasonably certain that everything Nasu says is only true for him when he's saying it. This is also referential to the first bit, and is my conjecture about what was so dangerous about ORT's power - and how marble phantasms are madness to earthen-bound folks.

4. impact - references to Neon Genesis Evangelion. During the impacts in NGE, angels decide to attack earth. I'm not going to spoil it, but it's definitely a series worth checking out if you like apocalypse and mecha genres.

5. F24 - an American fighter jet.

6. crackling radio - to continual on the war themes, this is sort of red-herring-y. It's just a reference to how bad technology used to be.

7. burning ship - when Viking warlords died, their bodies were put onto ships loaded with wealth, lit on fire and sent out to sea. The first bit, of course, talks about Arturia.

8. black barrel - a reference to Angel Notes, which is a world created by Nasu (set in the Nasuverse of course) in which the Earth dies and, with a dying call, summons the Types from other planets to destroy humans along with her, because she's framed as a jealous kind of lover. Black Barrel is both the weapon and the last living human who wields this weapon. The world is pretty much inhospitable to humans any longer, and the living entities are humans capable of living in the world's conditions.

9. bone marrow - the essence of humanity, taking a sort of biological view on this, much like the Greek philosophers would. The stuff in our bones, the stuff that gives us structure.

10. spear of Longinus - when Jesus was crucified, a soldier named Longinus poked him in the heart to check if he were dead. When you're crucified, your lungs fill with water for various biological reasons, and he was probably not too careful about poking a dead body, so basically blood and water came out. This is also referential to the Black Barrel because it's known as Longinus.

11. ripped to pieces - Jesus was never ripped to pieces, but this is actually a reference to Andronicus the First of the Byzantine Emperor. It was probably the proudest remnants of Rome, but then it was sacked by the crusaders after Andronicus was ripped to pieces by the mobs. After that, most of the treasure was gone and even the memory of classics died, contrasting with the example of bone marrow.

12. lines drawn in conflict - a reference to a postmodern critique of borders, especially of the way current middle eastern conflict was created: by a bunch of old british guys with no concept of nationality, race and ethnicity. Might be some political commentary on my part, but definitely somewhat valid, as middle eastern scholars from the middle east seem to agree rather readily.

13. so long so sick - a garbling of lyrics of a song about the collapse of a world named Mechanism of Control. Probably the most obscure reference ever.

14. popcultur - a record label by an artist named Madeon. the words-put-together-like-this are from Martin Solveig, who he sampled in a song called… Pop Culture. A dramatic balance to the other themes in here.

15. Gravity's Rainbow - a very, very divisive book, probably amongst the most important books of all time in literary scholarship, about a man who could predict where a certain type of German missile could fall based on his sexual habits. Set in World War 2.

16. Finnegan's Wake - possibly the most incomprehensible literary work of all time, by James Joyce. It's style is very, very much like what you're reading right now. Only he references stuff in other languages. 60 other languages.

17. Infinite Jest - a more recent book by the late David Foster Wallace, a doorstopper which amidst too much to explain, is about how a man creates a movie so perfect that after watching it, your only desire, ever, will be to watch it on repeat forever. Better than sex on a speedball. It's fictional, but the book comes close to this movie.

18. Special Relativity - a theory by Einstein about how the celestial entities set on a net-like structure known as the universe. There are a bunch of things in it that make this a pun on infinity. Also a pun on gravity and light (rainbows).

19. nationalities - Gravity's Rainbow features a South African commando squad. James Joyce was Irish. Popcultur is a French label. The man who directs the movie in Infinite Jest has a name that means incandescent in Spanish. Einstein was a Jew, but a German Jew.

20. Eowyn and Nazgul - a reference to Lord of the Rings. Might be an unintentional crowning moment in gender issues pre-postmodernism. It was also the moment I fell in love with women.


End file.
